Nathalie Vandystadt, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, told Sputnik on Monday that she believed the recent publication of a list of employees of Sputnik's UK bureau in The Times newspaper was a domestic UK matter.
BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th December, 2018) Nathalie Vandystadt, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, told Sputnik on Monday that she believed the recent publication of a list of employees of Sputnik's UK bureau in The Times newspaper was a domestic UK matter."We have no comment on this. This is a matter for national authorities," Vandystadt said.
On Sunday, The Times published a list of eight journalists working at Sputnik's UK office in Edinburgh, complete with their photos, Names, and job titles. The article also contained an appeal by Alex Cole-Hamilton, a member of the Scottish parliament from Scottish Liberal Democrats, to have Russian nationals living in Scotland and engaged in "information warfare" to destabilize the United Kingdom deprived of their assets in the country.
In response to The Times article, Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Sputnik and the RT broadcaster, on Monday congratulated the United Kingdom on the "upcoming 1933," a reference to the year Nazi leader Adolf Hitler became German chancellor and ordered a decree enabling government control over the press.
The practice of publishing such lists of journalists was launched by Ukraine's Mirotvorets website, which is known for revealing personal information of people who are considered to be "enemies of Ukraine," including Ukrainian and foreign journalists who covered the military conflict in Donbas, public figures who visited Crimea, and others. Following the publication of their personal data, some of these individuals faced personal threats.
Such actions have been widely criticized in Moscow and some other states.
In early December, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) reached an unanimous agreement on the safety of journalists and media pluralism for the first time in 27 years. Commenting on the issue, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the adopted OSCE document on the protection of journalists reflected concerns about the illegal interference with journalists' private lives that could threaten their safety.
